Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king-Chapter 555: A lonesome dinner

The prince’s tent glowed with the warm, flickering light of beeswax candles, their golden flames casting dancing shadows across the canvas walls. The air hung heavy with the rich aromas of campaign fare - roasted venison crusted with herbs, steaming pea soup thickened with barley, and the earthy scent of fresh-baked bread still warm from the field ovens.

It was no royal banquet, as a matter of fact, it was a bit too low considering to whom it was entitled to.

At the center stood a simple oak table, its surface worn smooth by years of use. Two high-backed chairs faced each other like duelists across its width - one occupied by Prince Alpheo, resplendent in a crimson tunic that seemed to drink in the candlelight, his black cloak pooled about him like spilled ink edged with gold.

The prince’s long fingers worked methodically at a crust of bread, reducing it to neat, even crumbs with the precision of a surgeon’s scalpel. His gaze remained fixed on the tent’s entrance, not with tension, but with the quiet certainty of a man who knew his guest would arrive - and precisely when.

The canvas flap stirred and the guest finally arrived .

Lord Robert entered , his once-imposing frame gaunt from captivity, yet still carrying himself with the unbowed dignity of his lineage. His sharp eyes swept the tent - taking in the warm lighting, the carefully prepared meal, the prince waiting like a patient spider at the center of this unexpected web of hospitality.

"Lord Robert," Alpheo greeted without looking up, his voice smooth as aged brandy. The knife in his hand flashed as he gestured to the waiting meal. "I trust the walk from your quarters wasn’t too taxing. Shall we dine?"

Robert’s jaw worked silently as he lowered himself into the offered chair with the care of a man testing the strength of gallows wood. His hands - once soft with noble idleness, now rough from confinement - hovered over the table before settling like fallen leaves on its surface.

"...What is this?" The words emerged hoarse, scraped raw from disuse.

Alpheo didn’t answer immediately. Instead, he lifted a spoon with the grace of a priest raising a sacrament, dipped it into the steaming pea soup, and brought it to his lips. The silence stretched as he savored the bite, the only sound the faint clink of silver on porcelain.

When he finally spoke, his voice carried the quiet weight of a judge passing sentence. "I bring you glad tidings and good food."

Robert’s eyes narrowed. Without breaking their locked gaze, he reached for a slice of venison and tore into it with teeth that had known hunger.

Alpheo’s lips quirked in something not quite a smile. He set his spoon aside with deliberate care, the soft clink of metal on ceramic echoing in the charged silence.

"Tonight," he murmured, leaning forward just enough to cast his face in candlelight, "you have the rare privilege of sharing my table. The circumstances may be... unconventional, given that officially me and you are enemies. And yet." His shoulders lifted in an elegant shrug. "Here we sit."

Robert responded by methodically stripping another piece of meat from the bone, his chewing slow, as if what was being said was beneath his notice.

A breath of amusement escaped Alpheo’s lips "I thought this as good a time as any to address certain... unresolved matters between us." His fingers traced the rim of his goblet absently. "Truths that may otherwise go unspoken."

The prince leaned back, the candlelight carving his face into planes of gold and shadow. When he spoke again, his voice held nothing but polite curiosity: "Tell me, Lord Robert - what convinced a man of your standing to cast his lot with rebels and traitors?"

No anger colored the words. No gloating. Just the calm inquiry of a scholar examining an interesting text. Yet the question hung between them like a drawn blade, waiting to see which of them would first draw blood.

The tent’s warm glow seemed to dim as Robert chewed methodically, the rich juices of the venison turning to ash in his mouth. He swallowed, opened his lips to speak—

Alpheo’s hand lifted, a single elegant motion that sliced through the moment like a blade. "Spare me the tired ballads about Arkawatt," he drawled, tearing another piece of bread with deliberate care. "That doddering old relic couldn’t hold a state together if you sewed it to his limp hands." The prince’s lip curled slightly. "If you truly wanted vengeance for him, you had your chance when I was still scraping by with mercenary scraps and ambition. But no—you waited until the crown was nearly on my head to make your move."

Robert exhaled through his nose, a sound like wind through ancient ruins. His gnarled fingers traced the rim of his goblet without lifting it. When he spoke, his voice carried the weight of confession dragged from deep waters.

"Peace," he murmured, the word soft as a prayer.

Alpheo’s eyebrow arched. "Peace?"

A ghost of a smile touched Robert’s cracked lips. "In Elyos’ settlement... I woke one dawn without reaching for the bottle. No wine. No cider. Just..." His calloused hands spread slightly. "Silence. The kind that doesn’t ache." His gaze drifted to some memory beyond the tent walls. "Sunlight on wheat. Sky so blue it hurt. And for the first time in twenty years... I didn’t curse the morning for coming."

The goblet trembled slightly under his fingertips.

"I knew what Elyos was," he continued, voice hardening. "Don’t mistake me for a fool. But that place..." His eyes snapped back to Alpheo’s, blazing with sudden intensity. "I would have burned the world to keep it."

The prince studied him, motionless as a stalking cat. Then, with deliberate slowness, he set his knife aside. "We held parlay today," he remarked casually, as if discussing the weather. "Offered terms. Even mercy, for those wise enough to take it." His fingers steepled. "I included sparing your precious settlement in those terms."

Robert’s breath caught—just for an instant—before his face shuttered again. But Alpheo had seen it: that fleeting spark of hope.

With the precision of a headsman’s axe, the prince continued: "They’ll refuse. Elyos with his fanatic’s pride. Niketas with his wounded vanity. Doesn’t matter which." He leaned forward slightly, candlelight carving his face into sharp planes. "And when they do..."

The silence stretched, thick with implication.

Robert’s fist clenched around his fork, the metal biting into his palm. The venison on his plate sat congealing in its own juices, forgotten.

Alpheo smiled—not unkindly, but with the certainty of a man who has already seen the ending written. "I’ll burn every last stalk of wheat," he murmured. "Every prayer-scratched wall. Every memory of your precious peace." His head tilted slightly. "You should eat, Robert. The meat’s getting cold."

"I’ve decided," he continued at last, voice cool and almost ceremonial, "on a task you may perform, if you wish to earn that pardon. For yourself. For your name. Perhaps even," he added, his eyes narrowing slightly, "for someone in that settlement."

Robert’s gaze slowly lifted, wary, searching. There was no venom in Alpheo’s tone—but there was no warmth either. Only the gravity of a man speaking with purpose.

"You may save one," Alpheo said. "One soul from what’s to come."

Robert blinked. He did not think much about it

"I don’t know her name," he said after a moment, and his voice cracked, just slightly. "She’s a child. Small. She works as my servant, in the little house I was given in the settlement."

Alpheo’s brow rose faintly. Her. The thought echoed in his mind, like a coin dropped in a still pond.

"Interesting," he murmured "You would bargain for a nameless child while your own neck still wears the noose." His lips quirked in something that wasn’t quite amusement. "Tell me, Robert is this some last grasp at nobility?"

"Neither," he admitted, his voice rough as unworked stone. "She simply... deserves better than burning."

He tilted his head. "And how exactly am I to spare her," he asked, with a mockery as delicate as silk, "if you don’t know her name?"

Robert looked down again, chewing on thought more than shame. "I saved her," he murmured. " She had no one. Just clung to me like a pup. I let her stay. She... stayed." He paused. "I don’t know what she is to me, but if you ask around about the servant of Sir Robert, you will find her."

Alpheo let out a slow sigh from his nose, as though weary of yet another man tangled in the vines of his own uncertain heart.

"For a service well rendered," he said, "I will spare her. And I will find her a place—one without ash on the wind and sermons dripping with treason." He took a sip of water, then added with cool indifference, "Still, did not expect such taste , you still have a wife do you not?"

Robert said nothing, not deigning the question with an answer.

He did not think of her in that way

"What’s the mission?" he instead asked

Alpheo didn’t answer right away. Instead, he calmly brought a spoonful of pea soup to his mouth and sipped it with the deliberate leisure of a man entirely unbothered by the weight of curiosity—or consequence—pressing on the other side of the table. He chewed once, twice, swallowed, and only then raised his eyes with a faint glimmer of amusement.

"Perhaps," he said, his tone maddeningly gentle, "it would be wiser to eat first."

Robert’s jaw clenched. He let out a breath through his nose, sharp and impatient like a kettle just before the whistle. "Is it really that dangerous?"

The only answer he received was silence.

The prince had expected that to be the last words spoke that night, and yet he was proved wrong.

Alpheo’s spoon paused halfway to his mouth. His gaze lifted—not sharp, not stern, but curious, caught off guard by the unexpected question.

Robert had asked it quietly, without heat, almost as though it had escaped him.

’’When’’ he’d asked ’’ will you have enough? When will you look back and feel content with what you’ve taken? With what you’ve done and achieved?"

A silence followed—not of discomfort, but of contemplation. Alpheo set the spoon down gently in the bowl, and for a time he had to think about what words to say. He leaned back in his chair, fingers laced over his lap, eyes drifting toward the candle , where moths danced like restless ghosts.

"I didn’t mean to kill Arkawatt," he said at last, voice soft but not remorseful. "Truth is, I had another plan entirely. I was going to hand him Shameliek’s son—freshly plucked from his horse like a gift on a silver platter. I’d thought it would be a fine trade: a princeling for a lordship. Something civil, something clever."

He exhaled through his nose. A slight shake of the head.

"But no. Arkawatt ordered me killed before we could even speak. His men didn’t ask questions. So plans turned to ash. And ash, as you know, makes for poor coin."

He turned back to Robert then, his expression unreadable—neither regretful nor proud. Just... aware.

"As for your question..." he began, his voice low, carrying the weight of a man speaking truths rarely spoken aloud."I would like to tell you that there is a limit. That somewhere ahead, beyond the blood and smoke, there’s a summit waiting. A final height, where I can plant my banner in the stone, look down on all I’ve won, and say, ’This is enough.’"

He paused, letting the thought hang, a ghost of a dream that even he seemed reluctant to disturb.

"But if I am to be honest with you—and after everything, I believe you’ve earned that much—then I must tell you a harder truth."

Alpheo leaned forward, the dim candlelight brushing the lines of his face, painting shadows that seemed almost alive.

"There will never be enough."

The words were not boast, nor threat. They came out flat, certain, as immutable as the rising sun.

"Ambition," he said, "is a hunger that cannot be satisfied. Feed it victory, and it will crave empires. Give it gold, and it will lust for crowns. It grows, Robert. It evolves. It devours every scrap you offer, and then it asks for more."

He exhaled, slow and steady, like a man speaking of an old, faithful enemy.

"I remember the boy I was," he said, voice softening, as though speaking to some distant, broken reflection. "Knees in the mud, ribs showing through torn shirts. Watching the light dance behind castle windows and wondering what warmth must feel like. In those days, bread was a king’s feast. A dry roof was a dream worth bleeding for."

He shook his head slowly, a grim smile pulling at his lips.

"But once you have the bread... you start to dream of the table. Once you sit at the table... you start to dream of the hall. Once you’re in the hall, your eyes stray to the throne. That is the way of it. Always the next fire. Always the next hunger."

His voice deepened, his words thick with a weight that seemed to press against the very walls of the tent.

"The man who begins with nothing... he is a terrible thing. For he fears no loss, respects no boundary, and bows to no god of moderation. Guilt, mercy, conscience—those are luxuries for men who have never felt the gnawing emptiness that eats the soul alive. For those of us born in the dark, the flame is not a comfort. It is a conquest."

Alpheo’s hand curled into a fist, resting atop the map as if to seize the whole world with it.

"The world does not give. It does not forgive. It does not care. It is a forge, and it will burn you or it will shape you—but it will never weep for you. Only those bold enough to seize fate by the throat and force it to yield will leave their names carved into its bones."

His gaze sharpened, pinning Robert like a spear.

"You ask me when I will stop. I tell you: there is no stopping. Either I shall stand atop all that I have conquered, or I shall be crushed beneath it. Either I will take everything—or everything, even my life, will be taken from me."

He reached for the bread, tearing a piece free with a slow, deliberate motion, and as he did, he spoke one final time, voice a whisper that somehow carried the force of a storm:

"Because there is one thing I fear more than death. More than defeat. More than the endless fall into the abyss."

He set the bread down, staring into the flickering flame between them.

"And that," he said, almost reverently, "is going back to being nobody."

The words drifted through the air like smoke, lingering, staining the silence that followed.For a long moment, neither man moved, as if the very tent held its breath.

And in the heart of that quiet, it became clear: no matter how high Alpheo climbed, no matter how many crowns he seized or enemies he crushed, the boy from the gutter would always be there, just behind his eyes, whispering—

More. Higher. Farther.

Always craving more.